Beware of Kal-Tire

[icarus]

You suck McCormick.

[BlackArcher101]

Originally Posted by moon

Thats ood because I have had nothing but great, not good, but great service form Kal-Tire in Lethbridge.

They often do work for free when it isn't much, never once tried to upsell and often told me that there were cheaper options or stuff that didn't even need to be done.

I have constantly had tires repaired there and drive back and forth from Lethbridge and Calgary a lot without any trouble at all.

From my experiences I would highly recommend them.

I guess it appears that it can be hit or miss based on location/employee.

Employee turnover isn't the best at these places, so the people working on my car could have been far different than your experiences. This incident happened in 2006.

[Bobblehead]

Good Kal Tire story:

Driving to a golf junket last summer, riding with a buddy and on the way through the Crowsnest, the service engine soon light comes on. Crap. He mentioned he had just had his oil changed the day before in preparation. We pray the car hold up to Sparwood, and it does. Checking the oil it is...dry. Nothing registers on the stick. The gas station doesn't have a repair bay, but they recommend Kal Tire just down the hill. So we put 3 litres of oil in, and as soon as the first goes in you can see it leaking out underneath. We let the other car know what is up, and scoot to the Kal Tire. It is about 9am. We get there, let them know we were just passing through, and what happened. So they opened up a bay, drove it onto the hoist. They had a guy checking it out and doing this and that for over an hour. We were hoping that a) the car wasn't hurt by the ordeal b) it wouldn't be expensive to fix, c) that we made out tee-time.

The guy said the car was ready, so we go in to pay.
$11.40
'Scuse me?
$11.40.

The tech said the filter had been over tightened. If you tighten it too much sometimes the gasket can wrinkle and a leak happens. They had drained the oil, put the filter back on correctly, topped up the oil and let it run for a bit to make sure no more leaks.

So we headed on our way (frequently stopping and checking the oil) but it was fine from that point on and we made out tee time.

Thank you Kal Tire of Sparwood.

[REDVAN]

So far I have had decent service at Kal Tire chinook, but that is only two sets of tires. We'll see how it goes when I go back in springtime.

[narbeZ]

Kal tire is heaven compared to canadian tire. Wow do I have stories about that place. Its makes my head hurt. +1 for canadian tire sucks thread.

[Traditional_Ale]

Originally Posted by BlackArcher101

Experience 1
Work done in Lethbridge
-New tires all around
-retorqued the lugnuts myself around 300 km after installation (to 100 ft-lbs, but a torque wrench won't tell you if they were torqued too high beforehand)
-rear wheel falls off going 120 km/h on hwy 3 at @11pm around christmas time (lugs sheared off & nuts still on other half) Good spark show though.
-spent christmas vacation fixing truck and finding identical replacement wheel

The wheel bounced over both oncoming lanes of traffic, to land in a farmers field nearly 1km away. It ran into irrigation pipe and had bent the middle in about 2m. It would have hit a farm house if it wasn't for the pipe.

Store didn't comment on it, nothing happened with it. Not worth the time or cash to further pursue it.

Experience 2
In Edmonton, I brought my truck in for free tire rotation. I waited in line to give my keys, and the 2 people in front of me were there to complain about shoddy work done (should have clued in, but since I'm a fool, I decided to give them a chance). One of the guys got scammed on the brakes (charged for new pads, never changed them). So they finally wheel my truck in, and I watch them rotate. The kid putting them back on didn't even rotate them correctly. Just did back to front, not side to side as well. He also reefed on the torque wrench really hard when torquing them. That's a no no. You turn lightly until it clicks. You don't raise yourself off the ground then slam yourself down onto the wrench, thinking the torque you just applied is close to the setting.

Since he was putting so much into it, the kid also slipped and hit part of my body... luckily he didn't scratch the paint.

So I watch him finish up and go out to pick up my keys. By now, I'm pretty leery on the work done, so I check all my wheels. I get to the passenger side front and WTF?!?! There's a god damn STUD missing... I go in calmly and explain to the manager that words can't describe this and to come out and look for himself. Sure he enough he sees it and says "Huh, that's strange... are you sure it wasn't like this when it came in?"... After telling him no, he goes back to the young punk tech who did the rotation and comes back to say "Ya, he sheared it off when he was torquing them... if you want to come back tomorrow we can replace the stud, I wouldn't worry about driving with only 4 studs out of 5... it will hold just fine, they are designed that way". EXCUSE ME??? You first don't apologize that the tech tried hiding the fact I was missing a fairly important piece of the vehicle, THEN you recommend I continue using it? LOL Needless to say, I made them tow it elsewhere to get fixed that same day. God knows how many other people have driven away with a lug or two missing.

I had to buy a 1 and 7/16ths wrench to replace my Tie-Rods. I just imagined beating the punk to death with it. Its like the size of my arm. 14 bucks at Princess Auto.

So needless to say... if I ever bring my vehicle to get tire work done... I will always remove the lug nuts when I get back home and retourque to the proper spec... it's the only way I'm sure it was done right.

Amen.

EDIT: I can't get the second experience to be a single quote. My adjustments do not save. Any ideas?

[BlackArcher101]

Originally Posted by Traditional_Ale

I hope the paper bag doesn't mean you worked there right? haha

Originally Posted by Traditional_Ale

EDIT: I can't get the second experience to be a single quote. My adjustments do not save. Any ideas?

Ya, I couldn't get it into a single quote either when I first tried posting it, weird.

[Mr.Coffee]

Another good Kal-Tire story. Was on a road trip to Vancouver with buddies passing through Kelowna and I drove over an odd metal object that pierced my tire. We drove it to the Kal-Tire nearby the next morning (stayed overnight... didn't think it'd be safe to fire off on the highway with said object in tire) instead of continuing to Vancouver.

Guy looks at it, says come back in an hour. We do this, and they fixed it- good as new (just basically sealed the puncture). I expected to be charged at least labour, but when I got to the counter they said don't worry about it. I asked another employee because at that point I wanted to pay them for such good service, but the other guy refused to take payment too. Awe...some.

[BlackArcher101]

That's Kal Tires specialty which I will handidly give them. They will always make a repair for free usually. Thumbs up to them for that.

But did you check your lugs? hahahaha

[Shazam]

Kal Tire ate my kids and causes male pattern baldness.